Laughter: An Effective Stress-Buster

There is plenty of evidence that laughter is indeed a potent medication. It may seem difficult to laugh when you’re stressed, but once you start laughing, you’ll soon find that your stress levels quickly decline. As you begin to get a grip on your stress, you’ll gain the perspective you need in order to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. Of just as great an importance, as you laugh away your stress, it’ll put far fewer burdens on your relationships with others.

Of course, there is more to good health than a sound mind. The peace of mind brought on by laughter quickly spreads throughout your body. Your muscle tension will begin to melt away as you leave the stress induced fight-or-flight responses behind and move into a state of normal body function. This allows your immune system to also move back toward optimal function.

Any type of overwhelming feeling can be overcome with a hearty laugh. Relaxing the tension behind the emotion allows you to fact-check the emotion and put it into a proper perspective. This may be particularly true when you are facing an overwhelming frustration or a burst of anger.

Healthy Laughter Tips

1. Make laughter a part of your daily morning routine. For the best possible result, make it a family activity. It’s very hard to maintain anger or frustration regarding someone with whom you share many good laughs.

If none of you are particularly good at making others laugh, you can always record a comedy show or sitcom that is appropriately funny for the whole family to watch together.

2. Figure out what senses of humor you have. What types of comedy are particularly funny to you? The more you practice laughing with videos, audios, and reading materials, the more aware you’ll become of what types of comedy strike you as particularly funny. You’ll gain a greater appreciation for family members as you learn about what sense of humor they have.

3. Spend as much of your social time as possible with people who enjoy laughter. You’ll quickly discover that those who laugh the most are often the happiest people. More importantly, laughter is catchy and you’ll soon find yourself laughing more and doing or saying more things that make others laugh.

Don’t be alarmed when you discover that you gain a different perspective on various peoples and ways of life as your worldview expands and you gain a greater appreciation of universal truths.

4. You must learn how to enjoy laughing at yourself. This is particularly challenging for those most in need of such a skill. When you’re able to laugh at your mistakes in life, you’ll also be able to take more corrective actions without counterproductive, harsh self-judgments.

5. Don’t be afraid to make others laugh too. It’s very difficult not to laugh when others laugh. The more you share those humorous things you witness or experience, the more you’ll find yourself laughing about them.

Humor is built into the world in which we live. Whether you’re laughing or not is purely dependent on whether or not you’re looking for the humor in life and allowing yourself the full enjoyment of it. The more you can laugh about life, the less stress will overwhelm you.